Johnson’s Top-Tier Journal Makes News in U.S. and Abroad

Research on CEOS and fatherhood published in Administrative Science Quarterly gains attention of social science reporters

December 13, 2012

Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ), a top-tier journal of organizational studies, recently caught the attention of two of the world’s foremost publications—the New York Times and the Economist. The journal, based at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, regularly publishes the best theoretical and empirical papers based on dissertations and on the evolving and new work of more established scholars, as well as interdisciplinary work in organizational theory, and informative book reviews.

The December issue of ASQ includes a paper titled “Fatherhood and Managerial Style: How a Male CEO's Children Affect the Wages of His Employees,” which was covered by theEconomist in November 2012, and mentioned by the New York Times in December 2012. The paper, written by Michael S. Dahl (Aalborg University), Cristian L. Dezsõ (Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland), and David Gaddis Ross (Columbia Business School), explores how the wages of employees change after a male CEO has children.

The study analyzed comprehensive panel data on the employees, CEOs, and families of CEOs in all but the smallest Danish firms between 1996 and 2006. The authors found that a male CEO generally pays his employees less generously after fathering a child. The birth of a daughter has a less negative influence on wages than does the birth of a son and has a positive influence if the daughter is the CEO’s first child.

In addition, the wages of female employees are less adversely affected than are those of male employees and positively affected by the CEO’s first child of either gender. The authors attribute this relative benefit to female employees to “the psychological priming of the CEO’s generosity after the birth of his first daughter and specifically toward women after the birth of his first child of either gender.”

The researchers also find that male CEOs pay themselves more after fathering a child, especially after fathering a son. “These results are consistent with a desire by the CEO to husband more resources for his family after fathering a child,” the authors write.

Abstracts of articles in current and past issues of ASQ are available online.